My own approach to literary problems is very like the one Dr. Johnson's blind housekeeper used when she poured tea-she put her finger inside the cup.

If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you'll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival.

The less self-conscious you are about what you are about, the better in a way, that is to say technically. You have to get it in your blood, not in the head.

When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one.

You shall know the truth, and it will make you odd.

Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.

Many of my ardent admirers would be roundly shocked and disturbed if they realized that everything I believe is thoroughly moral, thoroughly Catholic, and that it is these beliefs that give my work its chief characteristics.